STATEMENT 2: HEALTH MISSIONS TEAM TRAINING

At a recent regional “Best Practices” conference I attended and spoke at we were having a question and answer time to try and get the pulse of some of the attendees, to see how they were tracking with the ideas we were promoting. (effective partnership, systems thinking, we should be shooting for excellence and not just average)

An older gentlemen raised his hand and stood to share his opinion. “I’ve been involved in this kind of work (short term medical missions I had to assume) for more than 40 years and most of what you say is all well and good but if we tried to do this before sending out teams we’d never get anyone to go.” (paraphrase of course) I tried to be as tactful as possible with my response which went something like this. “Maybe if that’s the case then shouldn’t we be asking ourselves should such groups or individuals go at all?” I had second thoughts after saying that but I believe it’s the truth. So we now come to point #2 in Dr Yorgin’s power point presentation which given in Tucson earlier this year. Please give us feedback and please inform anyone you think might be interested about this blog and about the Health for All Nations. 
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Statement 2: Health missions team training

• Christian healthcare professional short term team members should undergo training prior to engaging in international missions health care.
• Paradigm shifts
  • Community health evangelism (CHE) instead of just focusing on doing clincs/curative care.
  • Mutual transformation/World view -> Beliefs -> Behavior (Behavior (taking into account that hosts tend to adopt the worldview of the goers so as not to displease their benefactors)
  • Integration of faith and vocation
  • Recognizing God as healer
  • Praying with patients
  • Dependency
  • Learning/Education rather than doing